Sunday, November 27, 2016

Tomorrow, Monday, November 28 (2016) starts the 2-day Teachers Pay Teachers Cyber Sale! Not only will you be able to find great resources for your therapy room, classroom, home, or other facility, but now you can win one of many $10 Gift Cards from TPT!

The great folks at TPT have been giving away $10 Gift Cards to sellers at random, so that we can pass them along to you, our faithful customers! What could be better?Some of us have joined up in a blog hop, so that you can hop along (wait, it's not Easter yet, is it?) and enter to win more than once.I've uploaded a gift-giving guide in my TPT store, to help you search for just the right resource for someone on your list - or for yourself! After all, you deserve something special, too, don't you?

I've been trying to bundle some of my resources together for bigger savings on some of my most popular items. I just uploaded a bundle of all 5 of my sets of interactive books for teaching core vocabulary to AAC (augmentative communication) users. These books are really popular, and now you can get all 5 sets at a fabulous price - especially with the sale!

So, leave a comment here or on my FB fan page, telling me which of my resources you most wish for. I'll pick a lucky winner at random from all of the entries, and announce who it is at 10 am Monday, Pacific Time, on my FB page.

Head on over to Sommer's Lion Prideto finish the loop.Have a great holiday, catch some great bargains, and above all else ---- Keep on Talking!

Sunday, November 20, 2016

I am joining up with the Frenzied SLPs for a blog linky this week. We are all sharing the stories of our journey to becoming SLPs. How did we get to here?

I knew some SLPs in graduate school who had known in college that this is what they wanted to do. They started out as Communication Disorders majors, and went straight to graduate school.My journey was a little bit different, and far from the straight path. I became interested in Autism before I even got to high school, after seeing a special on t.v. about kids with the disorder. This was way back when Autism was still considered Childhood Schizophrenia.So, in college, I became a psychology major, and got to do some work with kids with autism throughout college by way of some special education classes. And I actually thought I had a chance at a job after school.But then PL94-142 passed. Just as I was finishing my undergraduate degree and the local public schools took over the students I had been working with and.... POOF! End of job prospects.

I searched for a job for a while, but I was young (19) and nobody really wanted to hire me.I worked as a special ed substitute teacher for a little while, but it was tough bouncing from one special education class to another every other day.So I applied for graduate school. Thing was, there were only 5 graduate programs in the whole country way back then that offered a specialty in Autism.

To make a really long story short, I ended up in New Orleans in a special ed Master's program that was terrible. So, I looked at Tulane to see what they had to offer, and found the speech pathology program. I had been working with teaching signs to the kids I worked with in college, so I was basically teaching communication skills already. So, I knocked on the door and they took me in.

I have now been a SLP for 38 years. It has been a varied, interesting, and sometimes wild ride. But it has never been dull. And I have never been unemployed.For the past 19 1/2 years I have been running my own private practice, providing independent evaluations and AAC implementation consulting and training.And what's next, you ask? Retirement is around the corner and I can't wait. I have other fun things planned for my retirement, and I'd love to get to them. My art studio is beckoning daily.In the meantime, I'm still passionate about what I do and why I do it. Every child deserves to have a voice!So, Keep on Talking!

Sunday, November 13, 2016

We’re in what should be the crisp, cool days of Fall. Well, some of you are enjoying the cool. I was recently in Boston and it was beautiful. The leaves had turned, and the days were cool without being cold.

But now I’m back in San Diego and it’s in the 80’s. Is that crazy, or what? Everyone knows you need cold snap nights to make good apples. And who can resist a good apple pie?

There is a fun book by Marjorie Priceman called “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.” It takes kids around the world to find all the best ingredients for an apple pie; giving them the chance to see where the produce, spices, and other ingredients come from (other than the grocery store, that is).

Best of all, for a speech-language pathologist, it offers some great opportunities for working on sequencing skills.

Just follow the link below and it will take you to the sequencing freebie:

The full resource includes shared reading activities for a week, and there are a variety of activities, including: sequencing before and after activities, making a shopping list, filling in a passport with countries and ingredients, matching countries with how you got there and what you got there and the order in which you got there, a map activity, sequencing pie making, and sequencing sentence strips to retell.

There are also 46 vocabulary cards and picture matching cards for lots of vocabulary building fun.

So, who am I?

As a speech-language pathologist for almost 40 years, I am passionate about giving other SLPs, parents, special education teachers the tools they need to implement AAC with fidelity and evidence based practices. I have worked with kids and adults with a wide range of disabilities; especially kids with autism. I have also worked in the public schools with kids with significant language learning disabilities. I give workshops, provide training to school district staff, speak at national conferences, and provide evaluations for speech-language and AAC.

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